Does it make sense to speak of "Universal Consciousness" or "Universal Intell...
May 14, 2014 at 3:22 am
(May 13, 2014 at 10:42 pm)ChadWooters Wrote:(May 13, 2014 at 8:45 am)Ben Davis Wrote: Mind/consciousness/self-awareness (or whatever appropriate term you want to use here) is a product of brains...Everything else is baseless conjecture.The idea that the brain produces the mind is baseless conjecture.
The idea that something beyond the brain produces the mind is baseless conjecture.
People have spent a long time denying "lower animals" experience and display consciousness, feel pleasure, pain, suffering, anxiety, and discomfort, and yet philosophical ideals of dominion have been sufficient to override such simple observational evidence, and edify the human mind to a "special" status, entertain ideas of the soul, and a consciousness far greater than the consciousness other animals express, but cannot fully convey due to translation issues.
There's absolutely no innate reason the family dog's obsession with tasty edibles should not be comparable with our own whims and desires.
And yet there is little to no effort to defend the soul of Dogs, or the non-biological origins of an Octopus' thoughts retrieving a tasty morsel from a mason jar.
Why?
There's nothing innately special about the human capacity for thought other than our ability to edify it in culture, and tell ourselves it is a unique ability, when it demonstrably is not.
